What does a PWM fan hub do?

[AtomicAppleHD]

I want to know what a PWN fan hub actually does. Does it allow individual control of all the fans connected, or does it make all fans connected do the same thing, or something else entirely? Sorry if this is a bit of a stupid question by the way.

 

[jimmyEatWord]

i think it somehow connects to the psu to power up all the units connected to one hub ?!? ain't that true

 

[Sedivy]

Well..it depends on the hub. I've seen a few pwm hubs by name but quite different in capabilities. The best one I've seen was from phanteks, and it allowed plugging in of all your pwm and dc fans, and still retained ability to control their speeds because it connected to the motherboard. Of course you wouldn't control the speeds of fans individually without a fan controller, but it can ramp both dc and pwm fans up and down based on temp signal from the motherboard which I thought pretty cool
Other pwm fan hubs either are for pwm fans only or allow both dc and pwm fans but maintain speed control of only pwm fans or have no speed control at all (plug into psu). My advice is, read the manual of the hub before you commit to buying anything.

 

[AtomicAppleHD]

Well..it depends on the hub. I've seen a few pwm hubs by name but quite different in capabilities. The best one I've seen was from phanteks, and it allowed plugging in of all your pwm and dc fans, and still retained ability to control their speeds because it connected to the motherboard. Of course you wouldn't control the speeds of fans individually without a fan controller, but it can ramp both dc and pwm fans up and down based on temp signal from the motherboard which I thought pretty cool
Other pwm fan hubs either are for pwm fans only or allow both dc and pwm fans but maintain speed control of only pwm fans or have no speed control at all (plug into psu). My advice is, read the manual of the hub before you commit to buying anything.

The Phanteks one you mentioned, does that allow individual control of all the fans? Or make all fans do the same thing?

 

[Sedivy]

No, the fans do all the same thing, though you can control that one thing in response to temp. But individual fans at different speeds, no.
If you want individual fan control, you need either fan controller, or if the number of fans is not greater than the number of fan headers on your mobo (and those fan headers allow fan control), a mobo utility.

 

[AtomicAppleHD]

No, the fans do all the same thing, though you can control that one thing in response to temp. But individual fans at different speeds, no.
If you want individual fan control, you need either fan controller, or if the number of fans is not greater than the number of fan headers on your mobo (and those fan headers allow fan control), a mobo utility.

Thanks for the help! Just out of curiosity, do you know any good fan controllers so I could control each fan individually?

 

[Sedivy]

Most fan controllers offer individual fan control, the only thing that differs is how many fans support. So you should be good with any controller you can get your hands on, they're not overly complicated hardware.
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/fan-controller/